As you know,  pretend play is often a part of a young child’s daily playtime activities. Children learn through play, especially while using their imaginations! They engage in pretend play when they make believe to be someone else or use one object to represent another. Children love to pretend that they are adults with different jobs and tasks to perform—they might dress up like mommy, have a tea party with empty dishes, teach a classroom full of stuffed animals, fly the couch to the moon, or explore the deep, dark closet-cave!

The Hidden Benefits of Pretend Play

 

Pretend play is an important part of childhood. You begin to see pretend play as early as the toddler stage. Young children are learning about themselves, their families, and the world around them when they pretend play. Children are not just discovering creativity when they let their imaginations take over in play—they are learning many important skills. Below are some of the skills children can learn from pretend play:

 

#1 Social-Emotional Skills – When children play together, they practice sharing, turn-taking, and negotiating. In addition, children can better understand and manage their feelings by acting out certain experiences. Pretend play also develops children’s ability to empathize, because they have to consider the way others act, think, and feel.

 

#2 Language and Vocabulary Skills – Children have a variety of experiences to share with each other, and when they talk and play together, they are actually teaching and learning new vocabulary. They are improving their language skills when they have to communicate with one another in a clear and effective manner—for example, when they are explaining a story which requires a logical plot and sequence of events.

 

#3 Problem-Solving Skills – Children can come up with complex plans and solve difficult problems as they play. They have to determine who is going to play which role, where the adventure is going to take place, and what events will happen along the way. If a problem arises during their journey, the children have to rethink the story and negotiate a new situation to reach a final goal that is agreed upon by everyone. Pretend play also develops abstract-thinking skills, which are higher-level thinking skills, for example, using a prop, such as a spoon, as a symbol for something else, such as a microphone.

#4  Disciplinary Skills – Children practice rules when playing. A girl might put her doll in time-out for not cleaning up a mess she made. The girl is more likely to discipline herself and follow the rules given by others having been a disciplinarian herself.

Ideas to Encourage Pretend Play:

 

Make time for make-believe! Creativity takes time to develop, and need time to use their imaginations.

• Show that play is valuable by playing with your children. Children realize that play is important if adults pay attention to them while they are playing and even engage with them in play.
• Appreciate and talk to your children about their play. We • often say, “You are doing a great job working,” but we may never say, “You are doing a great job playing!”
• Create an environment for play. It is important for adults to provide materials t• that children can explore and adapt in play, and it is also great if adults can provide a special “play place” or designated area for the pretend play and all the inspiring props.
• Adults should monitor play, so that when play appears to be “stuck” or  unproductive, they can suggest new character roles, offer new props, or provide new adventures to inspire ideas, such as a trip to the park, aquarium, or museum.

Children get ideas for their play from books, movies, field trips, and everyday life, so if your children are interested in a particular topic, such as animals, take them to the zoo, read them a book about farm animals, or watch a movie about animals—they will be filled with ideas for pretend play! You might see your children reenacting the trip or scenes from the movie with friends. This helps them to better remember the experience, and it reinforces all of their newly learned information.

Many children who stutter have negative feelings and attitudes about communication and suffer from anxiety because of this. Fluency disorders often times have three components, called the “ABCs” of stuttering:

A: Affective

B: Behaviors

C: Cognitive

 

The B, or stuttering behaviors are the only part that others can see, while so much is going on in the mind of a person who stutters (A- affective and C- cognitive), making stuttering a much more complex disorder to evaluate and treat.

Yoga can be very beneficial to children who stutter. Coupled with speech-language therapy, yoga can improve speech fluency in children who stutter, by taking all three components of the disorder into account.

1) Respiration:

Breathing is also a very important to fluent speech. Yoga teaches children to learn to breathe from their bellies (“diaphragmatic breathing”) rather than from their shoulders (“clavicular breathing”). Diaphragmatic breathing allows for more substantial breaths and adequate breath support for fluent speech.

2)Positive Thoughts:

Meditation is a part of yoga, which teaches us self acceptance, the ability to let thoughts go, being in the moment and thinking in new ways.

3)Relaxation:

Yoga promotes overall relaxation, reducing anxiety and tension. Many children who stutter are anxious and tense. In a moment of disfluency, it is much more effective to relax and ease out of it, rather than fighting through it. A good example of this is a “finger trap.” The only way to escape a finger trap is by relaxing and gradually pulling your fingers out of it. The more force you use to pull, the more impossible it is to get out of it.

Yogarilla Cards make adding Yoga to your child’s Speech-Language therapy program easy and fun! There are 55 cards in each Yogarilla set. Each card highlights a different yoga pose, various modifications and additional challenges for each pose. Children love OTis the adorable and friendly gorilla who demonstrates each pose!

 

7 Risk Factors for Persistent Stuttering:

 

1) Greater than 60% of child’s speech is dysfluent

2) Dysfluencies persist longer than 12-18 months after their onset.

3) Family History of stuttering: Almost 50% of people who stutter have a family history of stuttering

4) Sensitive temperament or negative reaction to dysfluencies (awareness of stuttering).

5) Concomitant speech and language difficulties or advanced language skills.

6) Late onset (after 3 years of age).

7) Gender: Male

 

7 Factors Associated with Spontaneous Recovery:

 

1) Early onset of dysfluencies (before age 3).

2) Typical speech and language skills

3) Decrease in dysfluencies during the 12 month period following onset.

4)Less than 50% of child’s speech is dysfluent.

5) Gender: Female

6) No family history of stuttering, or relatives who have recovered from stuttering.

7) Outgoing and carefree temperament.

 

Graduation season is upon us and I am once again taken back to the thrilling feeling of accomplishing the intense feat of a achieving a Graduate Degree in Speech-Language Pathology. Now, as a practicing SLP, graduation season reminds me just how valuable my graduate degree has been for me, in all aspects of my life.

I have been practicing for over 12 years as an ASHA licensed SLP, and I couldn’t be more in love with my career.

Being an SLP continues to quench my desire to help others. It has given me the opportunity to work alongside of other caring and devoted clinicians who continue to inspire me on a daily basis.

This field has brought me flexibility in my time, which I am most grateful for in my recent years as a Mom of two young girls. I continue to be sincerely touched by each of the relationships and friendships that have developed from the families with whom I have worked with in therapy and continue to be inspired by my colleagues at our practice.

After 12 years, and all of the changes that life brings, I feel stronger than ever that the work of an SLP fits me like a glove; what a true testament to finding an amazing field!

So that said, Congratulations new SLP graduates!!!  Welcome to this rewarding, exciting, and in demand field! There are so many people whose lives you will have the honor of touching.

On behalf of our team of Chatterboxes SLP’s, here’s our top 10 pieces of advice to you:

www.TeamChatterboxes.com

 

Is your toddler crying and whining to communicate what he wants?

 

It might be helpful to introduce a few functional signs. Signs can help children express themselves, reducing communicative frustration. Signs are considered to be words that are produced with the hands instead of the speech mechanism.

 

They are easier for children to use that orally produced words and have been evidenced to facilitate speech production and oral word use, especially when paired with spoken words.
 

When introducing signs, start with just one or two signs for the purpose of requesting, e.g., signs for more and please. Use hand-over-hand modeling to teach the signs, e.g., taking your child’s hands and performing the sign for him or her. Over time, fade the level of support you provide your child to facilitate their use of the signs.

After your child becomes proficient with a requesting sign, introduce early vocabulary items, e.g., ball, car, train, music, open, eat, drink, milk, cookie, cracker, all done, help and thank you.

 

1) More

The ‘more’ sign is an amazing tool for your child to be able to request food, actions, drinks, toys, books and anything really he or she would like to experience again!

 

2) Help

Is your child stuck? Did their toy break or drop? Did they loose their shoe? Encouraging your child to ask for help will allow him or her to understand they can shape their environment with the power of communication; rather than crying, fussing or yelling.

 

3) Want

Encourage your child to ask for what he or she wants! This will help you child build vocabulary into moving into short phrases, such as “I want juice!” or “I want Mommy!”

4) Open

Empower your child ask you to Open the door, Open their snack, Open the book, Open a toy, Open your bag!

5) All Done

Finished playing with a toy? Sign All Done when cleaning it up. Is your child done with lunch? Help them sign, All Done.  your child will learn to tell you when they don’t like something, or prefer to be finished.

6) Mom:

  Dad:

Make it necessary that your child asks for you! Pretend you don’t know who they want! Help them answer who questions; and identify turn taking. Whose turn is it? Mommy’s Turn!

 

7) Eat

Knowing the sign to eat will help your child be able to tell you when they are hungry, and continue to build vocabulary. What do you want? Do you want to Eat or Play? Let your child choose from different responses and continue to build language.

8) Milk

Give your child a word for the drink they love and request they use it before they are given the milk or their bottle. Make your child request it; each and every time!

When practicing, especially when introducing a new sign, have two adults working with your child, in that one person holds the toy/object that your child is requesting and the other person does hand-over- hand modeling of the sign. The person holding the toy/object sits across from your child, at eye level with him/her, and the other person sits behind him/her, taking his/her  hands to help him/her physically produce the sign.

Most children make errors in articulation, when they are learning to talk. Many children naturally outgrow these articulation errors or error patterns.

    Naturally suppresses by age 4

 

2) Velar Fronting, e.g., “tup” for ‘cup’

    Naturally suppresses by 3 years, 6 months

 

3) Interdental Lisping, e.g., “thit” for  ‘sit’

    Developmentally appropriate until age 4 years, 6 months

 

4) Final Consonant Deletion, e.g., “Da” for ‘Dad’

    Naturally suppresses by age 3 years, 3 months

 

5) Stopping of Voiced Sounds /th/, e.g., “dat” for ‘that’

    Naturally suppresses by age 5

   

6) Palatal Fronting, e.g., “seep” for ‘sheep’

    Naturally suppresses by age 3 years, 6 months

 

7) Gliding of /r/, e.g., “wing” for ‘ring’

    Naturally suppresses by age 5

    

8) Gliding of /l/, e.g., “wamp” for ‘lamp,’ or “yike” for ‘like’

    Naturally suppresses by age 5

 

9) Weak Syllable Deletion, e.g., “tehphone” for ‘telephone’

    Naturally suppresses by age 4

    

10) Consonant Harmony, e.g., “mime” for ‘mine’

    Naturally suppresses by age 3 years, 9 months